From a Tiber town to a Mediterranean state
Rome’s growth was neither inevitable nor planned in advance. A town on the River Tiber, which Roman tradition said was founded in 753 BCE, gradually came to dominate its neighbours, then the Italian peninsula, then the lands around the Mediterranean. Ancient writers told the story as a long series of wars. Modern historians add that those wars were won as much by organisation, alliances and persistence as by battlefield skill.
Dates for the earliest period come from later Roman tradition and are uncertain. The kings of early Rome, including those linked to the Tarquin kings, are partly legendary, and archaeology cannot confirm the details. What can be said is that by around 500 BCE Rome was an important Latin city under strong Etruscan influence, and that around that time its monarchy was replaced by a republic run by annually elected magistrates.
Conquering Italy
In the fifth and fourth centuries BCE Rome fought many local wars against neighbours such as the Aequi, the Volsci and the Etruscan city of Veii. Veii’s fall, traditionally dated to around 396 BCE, gave Rome control of a large area of land. Shortly afterwards, a Gallic raid sacked Rome itself, which is traditionally placed around 390 BCE, though the date is debated. The city recovered and rebuilt.
In the following decades Rome defeated the Latin cities that had been its partners and then fought a series of wars against the Samnites in the central Apennines. By around 290 BCE the Samnites had been subdued. The war with King Pyrrhus of Epirus, who fought on behalf of the Greek city of Tarentum in the 280s and 270s BCE, ended with Rome taking control of the south. By the middle of the third century BCE most of the Italian peninsula south of the Po valley was under Roman leadership, long before there was a Mediterranean empire.
The alliance system
A key reason for this success was how Rome treated defeated opponents. Instead of ruling every community directly, Rome tied many of them to itself by treaty. These allies kept their local government but had to supply soldiers when Rome called. Some communities received full Roman citizenship, others a partial status, and a few were punished by losing land to Roman colonies. Roads, such as the Via Appia begun in 312 BCE, linked colonies to the city and carried troops. The Roman road travel network that resulted later became one of the empire’s defining features.
This system gave Rome access to large reserves of manpower. After a defeat, Rome could replace lost soldiers more easily than most rivals. This helped it survive disasters that might have ended a smaller state.
Overseas wars
Once Rome controlled Italy, it faced Carthage, the major naval and commercial power of the western Mediterranean. The three Punic Wars, between 264 and 146 BCE, gave Rome its first overseas territories and removed its chief rival. The details are in the separate account of the three wars, and the dramatic defeat at Cannae is covered in the account of Hannibal double envelopment. Carthage was destroyed in 146 BCE, and the same year Roman forces also sacked Corinth in Greece.
At the same time, Rome intervened in the eastern Mediterranean. Wars against Macedon and the Seleucid king Antiochus III, in the late third and early second centuries BCE, broke the power of the Hellenistic kingdoms to resist. Roman policy in the East changed from protecting Greek cities to controlling them. In 133 BCE the king of Pergamon left his kingdom to Rome in his will, and it became the province of Asia, an event that links to the story of the Roman Asia province.
Turning conquest into provinces
A province was originally the sphere of command assigned to a Roman magistrate, and over time it came to mean a territory under Roman administration. Sicily, taken from Carthage, is usually counted as the first. A governor, usually a former senior magistrate, held military and judicial authority for a limited term, supported by a small staff.
Provinces mostly paid taxes, usually based on a share of the harvest or a fixed sum, and they provided supplies for the army. Tax collection was often outsourced to private contractors. This system gave scope for abuse, and some governors were prosecuted for extortion. Local elites were usually left in place, and many city governments continued to function under Roman oversight. The workings of the Roman Senate, which supervised these arrangements, are explored in the article on the republic’s institutions.
Rome also built roads, planted colonies of citizens and veterans, and constructed works such as Roman aqueducts that tied new lands into a Roman style of life. Latin spread, local nobles adopted Roman habits, and over generations many provincials became citizens. This is sometimes called Romanisation, though historians now stress that the process varied greatly and went in both directions.
Strain and civil war
Conquest changed Rome itself. Wealth from war enriched some families, and large estates worked by enslaved people displaced many small farmers, a theme connected to Roman slavery. Armies were increasingly loyal to their generals, who promised land and rewards. In the last century BCE a series of ambitious commanders, from Marius and Sulla to Pompey and Caesar, used their troops in politics. The era of civil war generals ended only in 31 BCE, when Octavian defeated Antony and Cleopatra at Actium.
Caesar’s campaigns in Gaul, between 58 and 50 BCE, brought much of present-day France under Roman control. Egypt became a Roman province after the death of Cleopatra in 30 BCE.
Augustus and the empire
Octavian, later called Augustus, made a new settlement in which he kept supreme power while preserving the forms of the republic. He reorganised the armies, fixed the frontiers on major rivers in much of Europe and set up a more regular provincial system. His reign is covered in the article on the Augustan principate. When he died in 14 CE, Rome ruled most of the Mediterranean coast and large inland regions. Later emperors added Britain, parts of Arabia and, under Trajan, Dacia, with Roman rule reaching its widest extent in the early second century CE.
Why Rome succeeded
Several explanations are offered, and none is complete. Rome’s flexible citizenship, its large pool of allied soldiers, the discipline of its legions, its willingness to continue wars after defeats, and its competitive aristocracy all played a part. Rome also benefited from the weakness or division of its opponents, and some wars were fought for defence in the way Romans themselves understood the term, while others were plainly aggressive. Conquest brought wealth and also enormous suffering, including mass enslavement, and this should not be lost in the story of success.